NEW ORLEANS — After knocking off the hapless Lakers and Nuggets to begin their post All-Star break schedule, the Nets traveled to the Big Easy to take on an injury-ravaged Pelicans team in a slight step up in competition.

That step up in class proved too much for the Nets to handle as they got off to a dreadful start and never recovered, losing 102-96 at Smoothie King Arena on Wednesday night.

“I think that’s what separates the really good teams from the middle of the pack,” Deron Williams said. “That’s where we are right now, in the middle of the pack, and we want to take that next step to being a good team. Hopefully we get there.”

The Nets certainly are right in the thick of things at the bottom of the Eastern Conference playoff chase. Their loss — coupled with a Hornets win over the Bulls in their first game without Derrick Rose — dropped the Nets (23-32) back into a tie for eighth place.

The Pacers, Pistons and Celtics are all tied one game behind the Nets and Hornets, and the Heat are just 1 ¹/₂ games ahead in seventh place.

In other words, every game is going to matter. That’s why letting a game like this one — in which the Pelicans were missing MVP candidate Anthony Davis and two of their three other best players in Ryan Anderson and Jrue Holiday — hurts more than a usual loss, especially because it’s followed by a brutal back-to-back in Houston and Dallas this weekend before the Nets return home to play the Warriors on Monday.

“This was definitely a game I thought we had a great chance of winning,” said Joe Johnson, who led the Nets with 21 points and 10 rebounds. “We were neck-and-neck pretty much the whole game, and we came up short.”

The Nets wound up in a neck-and-neck struggle with the Pelicans (30-27) for most of this one, but only after a horrendous start saw them fall behind 15-4. Brooklyn missed 13 of its first 15 shots and committed two turnovers to allow New Orleans to take control of the game and keep the Nets in a position they had to spend most of the night trying to catch up.

Nets coach Lionel Hollins said the Pelicans “earned the win”.AP

“We got off to a really slow start and we couldn’t buy a basket in that first quarter,” said Williams, who had 10 points and six assists in 33 minutes after a pair of outstanding performances against the Lakers and Nuggets. “We dug ourselves a hole, but we were able to come back and tie it up and had chances to take control of the game, and just didn’t do it.”

Instead, it was the Pelicans who took control late, going on a 10-0 run after the Nets pulled to within 83-82 early in the fourth on a pair of free throws from Jarrett Jack, who returned from a hamstring injury to give the Nets 15 points off the bench.

Though Jack, Brook Lopez (15 points) and Thaddeus Young (19 points) combined to score 49 points off the bench, it wasn’t enough to overcome a Pelicans team that got a career-high 25 points from Quincy Pondexter, Lopez’s high school teammate, and 15 points and 11 assists from Tyreke Evans. The Pelicans also knocked down 11-of-25 attempts from behind the 3-point arc.

“We couldn’t score, and we couldn’t get stops,” coach Lionel Hollins said. “They made some big shots. … They just played well. They earned the win.”

The Nets have looked better since moving Kevin Garnett for Young and switching to a smaller, more athletic look across the board. But Wednesday night proved they still have plenty of work to do before they can be trusted to play well enough to win consistently.

And given how compacted the Eastern Conference standings are, it could be games like this one — against an opponent decimated by injury — that could be the difference between them making the playoffs for a third season in a row or sending the Hawks a lottery pick.